ABSTRACT
As noted in 1.3, the field of linguistic palaeontology deals with historical or prehistoric inferences based on ancient (attested or reconstructed) vocabularies. Since Dravidian languages lack the copious ancient literature which is found in OIA, 1 the study of reconstructed forms can provide important information about earlier stages of Dravidian, apart from what is obtained from the study of linguistic borrowings between Dravidian and Indo-Aryan (3.22). The present chapter draws on a collection of Proto-Dravidian (PD) cultural vocabulary derived from Burrow and Emeneau’s Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, revised edition (DEDR, Burrow and Emeneau 1984). Sections 8.3 and 8.4 present the major conclusions which can be drawn from these materials regarding the habitat, subsistence patterns, and culture of the earliest speakers of Dravidian, and their possible identifications with known archaeological cultures.
